Charles de Gaulle

Born in Lille in 1890, de Gaulle was a decorated officer in World War I, wounded multiple times and held as a prisoner of war. During the interwar years he pushed for mobile armoured divisions, a doctrine vindicated when Germany invaded in May 1940 and he led a counterattack before his appointment as Undersecretary for War. Rather than accept the armistice, he escaped to England and issued his Appeal of 18 June, becoming the undisputed leader of the Free French Forces and later the French National Liberation Committee. He chaired the Provisional Government from 1944 to 1946, introducing dirigiste economic policy that fueled thirty years of growth known as the Trente Glorieuses, then resigned and spent the early 1950s writing his War Memoirs. The Algerian crisis pulled him back in 1958; he founded the Fifth Republic with a powerful presidency, won election with 78% of the vote, granted Algeria independence, withdrew France from NATO's military command, and built an independent nuclear arsenal that made France the fourth nuclear power. He vetoed Britain's entry into the European Economic Community twice, condemned US intervention in Vietnam, sparked controversy wi